55 Marriage poems

Sara, widow, 31 Henry pulled our heartwood along the rutted street that town stood beside, built two rooms and called them home. My Henry did that. There. And I lived all those days inside his love. But there is a kind of hunger that feeds on flesh. Only, let it be yearning, heaving, rising flesh. Only, let it be flesh living and loving. Alive. Let it be life. There is a kind of hunger that feeds on life. They carved into him with banquet knives, made stew of his skin and stirred it with his own bones. My Henry served: the meat and the pot to cook it in. And there was no charge against the men who made that meal.

She was in terrible pain the whole day, as she had been for months: a slipped disc, and there is nothing more painful. She herself was a nurse’s aide, also a poet just beginning to make a name for her nom de plume. As with most things in life, it happened when she was changing channels on her television. The lucky man, on the other hand, was smiling for the first time in his life, and it was fake. He was an aspiring philosopher of dubious potential, very serious, but somehow lacking in essential depth. He could have been an adequate undertaker. It was not the first time for either of them. It was a civil service, with no music, few flowers. Still, there was a slow and erratic tide of champagne—corks shot clear into the trees. And flashcubes, instant photos, some blurred and some too revealing, cake slices that aren’t what they were meant to be. The bride slept through much of it, and never did we figure out who was on whose team. I think the groom meant it in the end when he said, “We never thought anyone would come.” We were not the first to arrive, nor the last to leave. Who knows, it may all turn out for the best. And who really cares about such special days, they are not what we live for.

Thou God, whose high, eternal Love Is the only blue sky of our life, Clear all the Heaven that bends above The life-road of this man and wife. May these two lives be but one note In the world’s strange-sounding harmony, Whose sacred music e’er shall float Through every discord up to Thee. As when from separate stars two beams Unite to form one tender ray: As when two sweet but shadowy dreams Explain each other in the day: So may these two dear hearts one light Emit, and each interpret each. Let an angel come and dwell tonight In this dear double-heart, and teach.

• Well look, the wedding guests are here again. Why not just send a card? Snapshot. Snapshot. Smile and kiss. But this bride has such a red face! Let her scramble past pardon en route to the loo. Evacuate the taffeta dire and paunchy. The groom is erect. The groom downed three pints and stole from the caterer. He would never be no grown-up, This part we'll remember. Dull and easy. Before the spawning and apathy. Before the dementia nurse and waiting for mama to die. Silverware. Cloth napkins. Carafes. Gather round. Sit pious and clench yourself. What's within should be held in. Choke it down. Medicine for the long haul. No more wildness is why I chose no more wildness. Now scurry ho, before someone else goes down on the bride. Isn't that her in the distance, up the pole? • By pineapple, by pamplemousse, we find ourselves back at the table armed with forks and particular ideas about what to drink. Go on, order what you want. Turn up the music, you. Lucinda, you have a great voice. You have a lovelygone face and teeth. O gums! Pink and alkaline. We live in the city with crowds of fallen. Soon I am dead and soon you. We'll all be dead together! Anne said. • Marie, you are not unclean. You are rose-oiled and shiny and ensconced in the corner with the witty anesthesiologist, inhaling ladysmoke at the café. It's a pleasure just to watch you scratch the crud off your lotto ticket tonight. Then in comes Jackson, looking like he's left his wife. And again Larry is extending his feelers toward Clarice. Larry, what gives? You'll soon lose interest. Eh, Mr Candlelight? I want to give you a good close reading. Come this way. • Oh skin! What a cloth to live in. We are not at the end of things. He's tuxedoed and I'm in a cocktail dress. How gussied up we get. Drink this, roll that. Another sender different gender. We're going to hit a winner. We're going to swallow vodka and slap down money and stand around frocked and gossiping and bleed a little in the bathroom from earlier today when we were a little minx. (He really is of the masses, mama said.) • Ladies and gentlemen, introducing Mr and Mrs of the moment now and dancing. Mr and Mrs End of Suffering. Mr and Mrs Safe and Headed Where. In the reach of night she'll have him. He'll have. A series of days filled up and emptied. A welcome closeness and a womb. He pours her a fizzy one. She pours him hers. Let's keep on doing this, let's do it together. A bit of drunk and full of wishing. (Two people jumping out of a building and holding hands, R said.)

We need a preacher who’ll say up in here instead of herein. Our vows should reference calla lilies and the snowy pistils they jab ardently at our faces. Let’s place their linty, foul-mouthed kiss at the center of satin table cloths white as bee boxes and us buzzing like the ichthyic insects we’ll invent: “coddle- fish” finning the air, murmuring for words beyond civil and ceremony, beyond moderation, all our senses under assault.

for Keith and Jen Friends I am here to modestly report seeing in an orchard in my town a goldfinch kissing a sunflower again and again dangling upside down by its tiny claws steadying itself by snapping open like an old-timey fan its wings again and again, until, swooning, it tumbled off and swooped back to the very same perch, where the sunflower curled its giant swirling of seeds around the bird and leaned back to admire the soft wind nudging the bird's plumage, and friends I could see the points on the flower's stately crown soften and curl inward as it almost indiscernibly lifted the food of its body to the bird's nuzzling mouth whose fervor I could hear from oh 20 or 30 feet away and see from the tiny hulls that sailed from their good racket, which good racket, I have to say was making me blush, and rock up on my tippy-toes, and just barely purse my lips with what I realize now was being, simply, glad, which such love, if we let it, makes us feel.

Yesterday afternoon, I hung a framed print in the living room— a task that took two head-throbbing hours. It’s a wedding portrait that we love:Frida and Diego Rivera. I wonder how two people could consistently hurt each other, but still feel love so deeply as their bones turned into dust? Before Frida died, she painted a watermelon still life; before his death, Diego did too. I want to believe that those paintings were composed during parallel moments because of their undying devotion. If I close my eyes, I can see melon wedges left like centerpieces except for the slice Diego put on the table’s corner— one piece of fruit pecked at by a dove that passed through a window. I know that I won’t be building a bookshelf anytime soon and that the chances of me constructing a roll-top desk are as slim as me building an Adirondack chair that sits plumb, but I’m good with the spackle and putty knives in my tool belt. The knots in my back might not be there if I had listened to her suggestions, and I could well have done without two hours of silence over a few holes in the wall. But somehow, life has its ways of working things out. This afternoon, I shut the blinds, turned off the TV, lights, and phone, and massaged my wife’s feet to fight off a migraine— her second one this week despite the prophylactics and pain killers that we store in the breadbox. For once, I’d like to experience what she feels: nausea, blindness, and pain that strike when the cranial vessels dilate, fill with blood, leak, and make the brain swell. Earlier, an MRI triggered the reaction as it mapped her head with electrical current, gradient magnets, and radio waves hammering her floundering eyes. For now, we have our room, the bed frame, and the mattress where she lies as I knead her toes. Come nightfall, I hope that we’ll sit in the patio and watch the breeze stirring the lemon, lime, and orange trees that I planted along the back fence. On certain nights, the moon turns our lawn into green acrylic where we sip Syrah and mint tea until all we know is the sound of our breathing among the whispering leaves.

Husband, today could you and I behold The sun that brought us to our bridal morn Rising so splendid in the winter sky (We though fair spring returned), when we were wed; Could the shades vanish from these fifteen years, Which stand like columns guarding the approach To that great temple of the double soul That is as one – would you turn back, my dear, And, for the sake of Love’s mysterious dream, As old as Adam and as sweet as Eve, Take me, as I took you, and once more go Towards that goal which none of us have reached? Contesting battles which but prove a loss, The victor vanquished by the wounded one; Teaching each other sacrifice of self, True immolation to the marriage bond; Learning the joys of birth, the woe of death, Leaving in chaos all the hopes of life— Heart-broken, yet with courage pressing on For fame and fortune, artists needing both? Or, would you rather – I will acquiesce— Since we must choose what is, and are grown gray, Stay in life’s desert, watch our setting sun, Calm as those statues in Egyptian sands, Hand clasping hand, with patience and with peace, Wait for a future which contains no past?

Are you content, you pretty three-years’ wife? Are you content and satisfied to live On what your loving husband loves to give, And give to him your life? Are you content with work, — to toil alone, To clean things dirty and to soil things clean; To be a kitchen-maid, be called a queen, — Queen of a cook-stove throne? Are you content to reign in that small space -- A wooden palace and a yard-fenced land -- With other queens abundant on each hand, Each fastened in her place? Are you content to rear your children so? Untaught yourself, untrained, perplexed, distressed, Are you so sure your way is always best? That you can always know? Have you forgotten how you used to long In days of ardent girlhood, to be great, To help the groaning world, to serve the state, To be so wise — so strong? And are you quite convinced this is the way, The only way a woman’s duty lies -- Knowing all women so have shut their eyes? Seeing the world to-day? Having no dream of life in fuller store? Of growing to be more than that you are? Doing the things you know do better far, Yet doing others - more? Losing no love, but finding as you grew That as you entered upon nobler life You so became a richer, sweeter wife, A wiser mother too? What holds you? Ah, my dear, it is your throne, Your paltry queenship in that narrow place, Your antique labours, your restricted space, Your working all alone! Be not deceived! ‘Tis not your wifely bond That holds you, nor the mother’s royal power, But selfish, slavish service hour by hour -- A life with no beyond!

All my life I was face to face with her, at meal-times, by the fire, even in the ultimate intimacies of the bed. You could have asked, then, for information about her? There was a room apart she kept herself in, teasing me by leading me to its glass door, only to confront me with my reflection. I learned from her even so. Walking her shore I found things cast up from her depths that spoke to me of another order, worshipper as I was of untamed nature. She fetched her treasures from art’s storehouse: pieces of old lace, delicate as frost; china from a forgotten period; a purse more valuable than anything it could contain. Coming in from the fields with my offering of flowers I found her garden had forestalled me in providing civilities for my desk. ‘Tell me about life,’ I would say, ‘you who were its messenger in the delivery of our child.’ Her eyes had a fine shame, remembering her privacy being invaded from further off than she expected. ‘Do you think death is the end?’ frivolously I would ask her. I recall now the swiftness of its arrival wrenching her lip down, and how the upper remained firm, reticent as the bud that is the precursor of the flower.